1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a system and a method for capturing and displaying an image of an object, and more particularly, to an image data control system for inverting and/or reducing an image of an object captured thereby, and an image data control method using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A digital camera may be rotatably connected to an image display terminal, such as a mobile phone, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), a personal computer, etc., and transfer an original image (i.e., image data) of an object captured thereby to the image display terminal. Such digital camera generally compresses image data to form a compressed image file having a data compression format, and transfers the compressed image file to the image display terminal. In this case, the image display terminal functions as a viewfinder displaying the image captured by the digital camera, so that a user confirms the image in visual and photographs a proper image. But, when the digital camera is rotated at 180° so as to be inverted, it is difficult that the user photographs a proper image because the displayed image represents an inverted state of the object. Therefore, a system for resolving the difficulty has been introduced. The system can inversely display the image captured by the digital camera in response to a command externally inputted.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram for explaining a conventional image data control system. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional system includes a digital camera 10 and an image display terminal 20.
The digital camera 10 has a lens 12, an image sensor 14, an image processor 16 and an interface 18. The image sensor 14 detects an image captured by the lens 12, and generates image signals corresponding to the captured image. Then, the image sensor 14 provides the image signals to the image processor 16. The image processor 16 has multiple buffer lines. The image processor 16 forms image line data on the basis of the image signals provided from the image sensor 14, and then successively stores the image line data therein. For example, when the image processor 16 has 0(Zero)th to 7th buffer lines and forms the image line data with a predetermined number of data units such as 0(Zero)th to 7th image line data, the image processor 16 stores the 0th to 7th image line data into the 0th to 7th buffer lines, respectively. Also, the image processor 16 compresses the stored image line data to generate a compressed image file including the image of the object captured by the lens 12, and then transfers the compressed image file to the image display terminal 20 via the interface 18.
The image display terminal 20 has an image control unit 22, a display 24, a memory 26 and a command input unit 28. The image control unit 22 provides the display 24 and/or the memory 26 with the compressed image file transferred from the digital camera 10. The display 24 displays the image included in the compressed image file. For example, when the digital camera 10 is inverted and captures an image of an A-shaped object, the display 24 displays a ∀-shaped image as shown in FIG. 2.
And, when a vertical flip command for inverting the captured image is inputted to the command input unit 28, the image control unit 22 drives a decoder 22a, an image flip processor 22b and an encoder 22c to generate a new compressed image file. The new compressed image file includes the A-shaped image inverting the ∀-shaped image (i.e., the image of the object captured by the digital camera 10). In this case, the decoder 22a decodes the compressed image file transferred from the digital camera 10, and divides the captured image into the multiple data units of the image line data. The image flip processor 22b reversely rearranges the multiple data units of the image line data divided by the decoder 22a. The encoder 22c compresses the rearranged image line data to generate the new compressed image file. Then, the image control unit 22 provides the new compressed image file to the display 24 and/or the memory 26, and the display 24 displays the original image as shown in FIG. 3.
The memory 26 receives the (new) compressed image file from the image control unit 22, and stores the same therein.
However, according to the conventional system, since the image control unit 22 requires the decoder 22a, the image flip processor 22b and the encoder 22c, there are disadvantages such that manufacturing cost and power consumption are increased. Also, when the vertical flip command is inputted, a time interval for inverting the captured image is increased because the multiple data units of the image line data are rearranged.
Further, the conventional system cannot adjust the size of an image captured by the digital camera. Therefore, when the size of a captured image is larger than that being able to be displayed on the display, there is still another disadvantage in the conventional system that a user cannot confirm the overall image captured.